how you provide value

1. Career Advice
7.26, 2014
Schubert Zhang

2. Don’t be a short-order cook
Simply being an implementer isn’t good enough – you need to be
involved in the process that leads up to implementation.
Good engineers don’t just follow orders, they give feedback to and
work with product owners to make the product better.

3. Self-promote
In order for you to get credit for the work you’re doing, you have to let
people know. You need to do a bit of self-promotion to get noticed.
If you do good work, but no one knows that you did good work, then it
doesn’t really help you.
Self-promoting doesn’t mean, “look at me, I’m awesome.” It means
letting people know when you’ve hit major milestones, or when you’ve
learned something new. It means … when you’ve got things done!

4. It’s about people
At a certain point, you stop being judged on your technical knowledge
and start being judged on the way you interact with people.
I’ve seen countless engineers get stuck at one level in their career.
Smart people, good code, but the inability to work effectively with
others keeps them where they are. Anytime someone feels stuck in
their software engineering career, I recount this advice and it has
always been right

5. None of this matters
Things are going wrong and you don’t like that. You are frustrated and angry .
It’s easy. You see, none of this matters. So some crappy code got checked in,
so the site went down. So what? Work can’t be your whole life. These aren’t
real problems, they’re work problems. What really matters is what happens
outside of work. I go home and my wife is waiting for me. That’s pretty nice.
Once you shift your mindset and recategorized the annoying things at work
as “work things,” You are able to think more clearly. You are able to calm
down at work and have much more pleasant interactions with people.

6. Authority, your way
You know you had to be more of a leader, but you are having trouble
being authoritative.
I can’t tell you how to be authoritative, that’s something you need to
figure out on your own. Different people have different styles. What
you need to do is find a style that you can live with, that makes you
comfortable. I can’t tell you what that is, but you do need to find it for
this position.

7. Understanding how you provide value
Be yourself, the way I provide value in a relationship is by using what I’m good at.
My value in relationships is that I am trustworthy, I’m stable, I’m safe. I call when I
say I will and show up when you need me. I remember birthdays and anniversaries,
and I’ll take care of you when you’re sick. I listen, I understand, I help. I don’t run
and hide when things go sideways. All of these things that I perceived as
weaknesses when I was young turned out to be invaluable assets. This is how I
provide value in relationships. It’s not the value everyone seeks, but it’s the value
I’m best equipped to provide. And that’s what matters.

8. To be the multiplier in a team
There was so much work to do and I felt like I had to do it all. I was coding so
much, and people were coming to me so frequently, that I was severely
stressed. There was just too much going on, too much code to write, too
many people’s questions to answer, just too much.
I could no longer be the go-to guy for any important piece of code to be
written, I had to learn to trust others to do that work. My role, he went on,
was to be a “multiplier”, acting as a multiplier that enabled everyone else to
be more effectively at their job.

9. Moving from “how?” to “what?”
To this point in your career, you’ve answered the question, “how?” As in, we tell
you what needs to be done and you figure out how to do it. At this point, though,
you need to answer the question, “what?”
Switching from “how?” to “what?” is very hard and takes time to develop. This is
the part where I see a lot of engineers get tripped up.
We call this “running open loop,” meaning that you do your job with minimal
oversight and yet still are making a significant positive impact on the engineering
organization and the company as a whole. This is the step where many engineers
fail to make the leap.

10. Act like you’re in charge
If you’re in a meeting, it’s because you are there to participate. If you’re
not sure why you’re there, stop and ask. If you’re not needed, leave.
Don’t go quietly into a room. Just act like you’re in charge and people
will believe it.
No one knows when you’re acting. If you’re nervous but act like you’re
not, then people won’t know that you’re nervous.

11. Let them win
There are a lot of arguing going on, and you pushing through to win a lot. I
know that most of the time you are right, but every once in a while let them
win. Pick the things that really matter to you and push for those but let the
other things go. There’s no need to win every argument.
The result: there were less arguments. People didn’t feel like they had to get
one over on me, and in turn, I became better at identifying things I really
didn’t care that much about. I stuck to my guns on important issues and let
the others ones get resolved by the other party. The intensity of all
conversations dropped considerably.

12. Learn from smarter
Identify someone at your work that is smarter than you in some way
(technically, organizationally, etc.) and attach yourself to them. See if
you can regularly have lunch or coffee and pick their brain for the vast
amount of knowledge it has. Your career, and maybe even your life,
could end up drastically better by doing so.